Chapter 3 Dean
Dean
The visitation yard looked the same as every institutional playpen, concrete bordered by chain-link and a few plastic agility obstacles scattered for enrichment.
Emily stood next to me, shoulders squared like she was braced for the next test of the morning.
The sky beyond the mesh roof was washed out, a white so flat it felt like the world had been bleached of saturation and intent.
I could smell the sharp tang of cleaning solvent beneath the odor of dog, and, beneath that, the faintest trace of the lavender perfume that clung to the collar of Emily’s blue cardigan.
Sergeant—out of his kennel for the first time that week, apparently—had looped the yard three times and was now sniffing every bolt in the chain-link.
His head came up occasionally to check on us, as if worried this was all a trick, and the second our voices rose above a certain threshold, he’d cower behind the garbage can and watch through the lattice.
I leaned against the frost-cold bench and let my eyes half-close.
It was a move designed to put people at ease, to make them think I wasn’t watching as closely as I was.
My mother called it my “resting criminal face.” Emily had ignored it so far.
She’d spent the first five minutes talking about Sergeant’s case history with the same tone you’d use to discuss a recalcitrant carburetor—gentle, practical, optimistic without sentimentality.
I admired that and found it quietly alarming.
She paced alongside me, clipboard clutched to her chest, eyes tracking the dog but not missing a beat of my body language. I could feel her assessment, like a laser sweep.
“So,” she said, pen poised but not writing, “what’s the appeal? Your mother’s preference was ‘any breed as long as it’s a shepherd mix,’ but you’re fixated on this guy.”
I shrugged. “He doesn’t fake it. When he wants out, he says so.”
Emily grinned, not unkindly. “You realize the same could be said about most convicted felons.”
“That’s probably true.” I found my hand at my throat, thumb hooked through the dog tags. I’d meant to keep the gesture hidden, but the cold metal drew my fingers back over and over, like a worry stone too valuable to leave home. I rolled the tags in my fist and caught her watching.
“You military?” she asked, and for a second it was just a question, not a probe.
I considered lying. Then I considered the absurdity—she’d check the records anyway, or more likely, ask around the local VA, where my face had already been passed through a few gossip circuits. I let out a slow breath, the cold burning my nostrils.
“My father was. Deployed three times before I finished high school. These were his.” I let the chain slip out, the tags catching a shaft of sickly sunlight and spinning a strobe onto the gravel.
Emily looked at them as if they were artifacts. “Army?”
I nodded. “He died in Syria. Two years ago this month.”
She didn’t gasp, didn’t do the cloying ‘I’m sorry for your loss’ script. Her eyes just narrowed a little, like she was shifting mental gears, recalibrating the narrative. “And you?”
I smiled, though it probably looked more like a flinch. “High school dropout. I do spreadsheets. Easier to handle.”
Her gaze softened, which was somehow worse than if she’d recoiled. “You seem like you know what you’re doing with animals. Or is that a front for my benefit?”
“It’s not a front.” I glanced at Sergeant, who had finally crept back in our direction, flanks quivering. “Some things, you learn quick.”
Emily crouched, balancing her clipboard on one knee, and tapped the yard with her knuckles. “He won’t come if you don’t get down here.”
I looked at my boots, then at her, then let myself fold into a squat. My left knee sang with the old meniscus injury, but I ignored it. Sergeant inched closer, low to the ground, then froze just out of reach. The muscles in his jaw fluttered with tension.
Emily nudged my arm. “Try your hand under, not over. Less threatening.”
I did. My fingers hovered palm-up, shaking slightly. “Why’s he so jumpy?”
“He was abandoned in a dogfighting bust,” she said, quietly enough that the breeze almost stole it. “Spent six weeks in a backyard crate. Some of the scars are physical, but most of it’s muscle memory. He’s terrified of men in particular.”
Sergeant’s nose bumped my knuckle, quick and suspicious, then darted back. I exhaled slowly.
“Is that why you took this job?” I said, voice low, “Or is it just a place to kill time between rescue missions?”
Emily’s lips twitched, uncertain. “My parents had a ranch outside Belen. When I was a kid, I’d sneak strays into the barn and try to rehab them.
I got good at patching things up, at least until they caught on.
” She paused, her hand still and open on the gravel, not reaching for Sergeant, just offering. “It’s stupid, I know.”
“Doesn’t sound stupid,” I said, and the words hung there, heavier than I meant.
Sergeant made a decision then. He slunk the last yard and pressed his head into the cradle of my palm, the whole body vibrating.
I scratched behind his ear, feeling the hot, rapid pulse.
He stilled, just for a breath, and I realized my own heart was beating hard enough to ring the dog tags against my sternum.
Emily smiled at that, genuine this time. “He’s picking up on you. Dogs always know the real from the fake.”
I grinned back, not trusting my voice.
After a few minutes, she stood, brushed the dirt off her jeans, and wrote something quick on the clipboard. “The club. You don’t mind that people know?”
I shrugged. “They’d have to be blind not to. Ma needed protection. She still does. You take what you can get.”
She nodded. “My mom drank herself to death by thirty-nine. My dad ran off before then. If I’d had someone who wore a jacket with my name on it, maybe things would’ve gone differently.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I let the silence breathe. Sergeant nudged closer, settling his weight into my thigh like he’d found safe harbor, at least for the length of a visit.
The sun shifted, lighting up the chain-link in a shimmer that made everything look almost clean, as if the world could be made new for just a second.
Emily closed the file, squared her shoulders, and said, “You can take him for a test drive, see if it works.”
I nodded and rose slowly to avoid startling the dog. He stuck to my side, uncertain but hopeful.
She led us inside, and as we passed the window, I caught our reflections—a patched biker, a tired-looking shelter manager, and a blue-nosed pit bull with a battered head but hope in his eyes.
I felt the weight of the tags, the press of memory and obligation, and something sharp and bright I couldn’t yet name.
“Thanks,” I said, as we reached the door. I tried to say it normal, but the word caught.
Emily caught my eye. “He’ll need a little patience,” she said, “but he’s not as broken as people think.”
Neither am I, I thought, but let it slide.
I walked out into the parking lot, dog on leash, and felt the world start to change.
In the car, started hyperventilating. The pit was all rib and sinew, balled so tight in the back seat he looked ready to punch through the window.
I kept my hands on the wheel, elbows locked and eyes forward, trying to remember the instructions: no sudden moves, keep the tone soft, let him come to you.
Sergeant’s gaze met mine, full of wild intelligence and resignation.
He was scared, but he hadn’t given up on the possibility that things might turn.
The radio played low, some oldies station. The air inside still smelled faintly of cigarettes. I thumbed the dog tags again, rolling them hard between my fingers.
A tap on the window startled both the dog and me. Emily stood on the curb, one hand shielding her eyes from the haze. Her hair had come loose in the wind, and she smiled with half her mouth.
“You forgot his paperwork,” she said, holding up the manila envelope. “And his meds.”
I lowered the window and took the paperwork and meds. Then, for whatever reason, I said, “I’m gonna take him for a walk nearby and see how he is out in the open. Join me?”
She hesitated at first, but then seemed to change her mind. “I’ll be right back,” she said and ran back inside. Both Sergeant and I watched her. When she returned, I could have sworn Sergeant smiled.
I unlocked the door. She climbed in, settled into the passenger seat, and let the envelope rest on her knees. Sergeant froze, muscles rigid, then tentatively snuffled at the back of Emily’s headrest, as if her scent was a passport back to safety.
“Did he throw up?” she asked, voice neutral.
“Not yet,” I said, “but it’s a work in progress.”
She twisted around and extended her hand, palm up. Sergeant licked at her knuckles, then leaned his whole weight against the seat back, his body language switching from DEFCON 1 to uneasy truce. Emily’s smile widened. “He likes you. You remind him of something from the old world.”
“Not sure if that’s good or bad.”
“Neither is he,” she said.
We pulled from the building, and I merged onto Trinity, letting the conversation drift. Emily unspooled the leash and reached back to secure it to the dog’s harness, her movement careful and measured. Her scent—soap, coffee, and something like cinnamon—crowded the air.
“Where are we taking him?” she asked.
“Thought I’d walk him on the mesa, see if he can handle open space.”
She nodded, the action so decisive I wondered if she was always like this. “Good idea. He needs distance from the kennels to reset his head.”
The rest of the drive was silent except for the scrape of paws and the shuffle of papers in her lap. Every minute or so, I’d glance over and catch Emily watching the dog, her eyes mapping his every twitch and breath.
When we hit the trailhead, she stepped out first, leaving the door wide so Sergeant could decide what he wanted.
He hesitated, then scrambled after her, nearly taking my arm off with the leash.
On the path, the pit stuck close to my left knee, glued by fear or habit or both.
The wind was up, making the branches click above us and sending little gusts of dust across the trail.
Emily watched the dog for a while, then started watching me instead.
“So, does this feel like a date to you?” she asked, her voice so dry it almost cracked.
I considered that. “I’ve had worse.”
“Not sure I have,” she said. “But I guess the bar is low.”
A beat passed. Sergeant stopped, ears rotating at some distant coyote.
Emily crouched, making herself small, and called him over.
The dog inched forward, head down, and she scratched his cheek.
The way she touched him was different from how she’d handled the clipboard—her fingers were softer, her attention divided evenly between the animal and the silence.
“My mother’s not ready for this,” I said, surprising myself. “She asked for a dog because she thought it would help, but she can barely get out of bed some days. She’s… floating. Has been, since my father died.”
Emily nodded, not asking for more, just waiting.
“She talks to the photographs like he’s going to answer,” I continued. “Leaves the TV on in every room. Fills up the time with random errands just to make the place feel less empty.”
“That’s normal,” she said, so matter-of-fact it stung. “Grief doesn’t like to leave quietly.”
I watched the dog nose at a tumbleweed, then circle back, unsure what to do with so much freedom. “He was gone more than he was home,” I said, and realized I wasn’t talking about the dog anymore. “But when he was there, everything was stricter. Cleaner. We had rules for the sake of rules.”
Emily’s mouth did the half-smile thing again. “You can see it in the way you stand. Straight lines, squared shoulders. It’s not a bad thing. But sometimes the things that keep you upright are the same things that keep you lonely.”
She was looking right at me. I found myself looking away, then back, then away again. The wind lifted her hair across her cheek, and she tucked it behind her ear, revealing a trail of black ink—tiny paw prints, four of them, just under the lobe.
“I like your tattoo,” I said.
She shrugged. “My first rescue. The shelter dog that bit me when I tried to put on his cone. I figured if I was going to carry scars, I might as well choose some of them.”
I nodded, understanding.
We kept walking. The path leveled out, and the town unrolled below us, little boxes and streets and the blue smudge of the labs in the distance. Sergeant started pulling less, then not at all, just pacing at my side like he was meant for it.
“Somebody’s got to take care of her. And the club… they’re family. Even when you want to kill them.” I wasn’t sure why I'd shared that, but it was too late to take it back.
“It’s okay to want something for yourself, you know.”
“I don’t know if it is.”
We stood like that for a while, Sergeant pressing into my thigh, the wind louder now. The distance between Emily and me was measured in less than a foot, but it felt bigger. I wanted to close it, to say something that would matter, but all I could do was offer the leash.
She took it, her hand brushing mine. The contact was electric, just for a second. I let go, but she held the leash loosely, not walking away.
“I think he likes it out here,” she said.
“Me too,” I admitted.
The wind cut cold, but I hardly felt it.
She looked at me, long enough to make my heart do something unfamiliar.
“Come by the shelter tomorrow,” she said, her voice softer now. “We’re open late.”
I nodded. “I will.”
She smiled, hair wild in the wind, and gave the leash a little slack so Sergeant could explore. I watched her walk, strong and easy, the paw prints visible against her skin. I realized then that she was seeing me, all the way through, and maybe that was scarier than anything else.
I touched the dog tags one last time, felt the weight of them, and let my hand drop.
The three of us walked back down the trail, shadows long and side by side.